


Something New

by alienbyul



Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: F/F, Minor Ha Sooyoung | Yves/Kim Jiwoo | Chuu
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29412210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alienbyul/pseuds/alienbyul
Summary: Lipsoul College AU—Jinsoul encountered a girl she wasn't looking for in a place she didn't expect. Would she recognize the opportunity for what it was or let it slip through her fingers?
Relationships: Jung Jinsol | Jinsoul/Kim Jungeun | Kim Lip
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	Something New

If Jinsoul had to spend any longer chasing this damn animal she was going to throw the wretched thing into the nearest river. It was a wonderful day in the suburbs, the kind that puts a smile on your face as soon as you wake up. It was the kind of winter day meant for huddling under a pile of blankets and watching movies, but instead of being warmly snuggled in bed with Netflix on, Jinsoul found herself engaging in physical exercise in the living room (the horror!), wallowing in horrible anguish.  
The cause of her misery: her mother’s evil, satanic demon cat, now perched on top of one of the living room bookshelves. Save an errant clump of fur, the thing looked just as unperturbed as when it dragged Jinsoul into the hunt a solid thirty five minutes ago. Jinsoul, on the other hand, looked like absolute hell. Her blond hair stuck determinedly in clumps out of her ponytail, and she was quite certain that she looked like a madwoman thanks to the cat scratches on her collarbone (even she didn’t know how they got there). I’m too old for this, she thought, thinking more fondly now of her annoying roommate Sooyoung and their messy dorm room back at University. Needless to say, this was not how she wanted to spend her Christmas break.  
“Mom! Make someone else catch the damn cat!” Her mom’s head stuck out a couple inches from the doorway of the kitchen, her expression about as beleaguered as one can expect when dealing with such blazing incompetence from her oldest and purportedly brightest child.   
“Five minutes, Jinsoul! If Nari doesn’t make it to the vet on time, I will disown you, don’t think I’m kidding!” she said. Jinsoul groaned and flopped onto the carpet. Nari leered at her from her perch above.   
“You wanna fight?” Jinsoul mumbled. The cat kept staring at her in a clear challenge. Jinsoul cocked an eyebrow menacingly. The cat deemed her to be not a threat and busied itself with grooming, nonchalantly licking at its paw like it was mocking her.   
“Yah, look at me!” she whined. Receiving no response, she decided that she needed to take drastic action. Summoning the last vestiges of her strength, she lunged at the cat and screamed at the top of her lungs.  
“Ahhhhhhh!!!” Thunk. “Ow!” Jinsoul found herself sprawled on the floor after a painful collision with a bookshelf, having flat out missed the cat. This time she watched it dart away from her, claws skittering across the tiles of the kitchen floor in a manic explosion of surprise. Across her field of vision Nari darted out from the kitchen… then through the hallway… to the door…  
In slow motion Jinsoul, panicking, watched the cat leap through the doorway to freedom, the door left open to cool the kitchen down while her mother baked.  
“Jinsoul!” the same mother now roared. ‘Tell me that wasn’t the cat!” Jinsoul dragged herself off the floor and sprinted out the door, her frustration discarded for panic.  
“That wasn’t the cat!” she called over her shoulder, already halfway down the driveway and frantically looking down the street. She tripped over her own feet, nearly face-planting on the lawn, and continued to run after the soulless beast. The thought faintly registered in her head that it was the middle of December and she wasn’t wearing a coat, but Jinsoul was running on fumes of desperation and a twenty year old college student’s special form of insanity. Losing ground by the second, she pumped her legs with new enthusiasm until the cat disappeared around the corner onto a neighboring street.  
“Damn it!”  
It was a beautiful day, even in winter; the sun shone brightly on the snow banks by the side of the road, painting the whole neighborhood in glaring white light. The trees shivered without their coats of leaves, adorned only in pretty patterns of frost which spiraled unrestrained across every available surface. The few clouds present drifted lazily across the blue sky like rafts on an uninspired river, the perfect picture of winter slowness on a weekend morning.  
Under this tranquil sky, Jinsoul growled in frustration, slipped on a patch of ice, and banged her foot on a parked car, its alarm wailing with fervor. Cursing under her breath, Jinsoul looked around wildly, spotting no movement save the scurrying of some idiot squirrel who didn’t know it was freezing out. “Jung Jinsoul, get it together,” she muttered, setting off in a random direction down the street. Jinsoul did not want to die today. While she was away at college, her little sister Yerim burned half of Jinsoul’s old pokemon cards in some sort of satanic ritual (Jinsoul blames Yerim’s tiny evil mastermind of a best friend, Yeojin). When she found out the day before, Yerim ran like a coward and locked herself in the safety of her room, so Jinsoul hadn’t had the chance to beat the little twerp up yet.  
Jinsoul’s agenda for the rest of her winter break:  
Find the stupid cat.  
Make Yerim pay.   
Sleep thirteen hours a day.  
Oh, and start worrying about the physics class that would start when she got back to school. Jinsoul had heard her new professor was a scumbag, the kind of teacher who preys on unprepared kids on the first day and doesn’t know the meaning of the word vacation. Apparently her mom didn’t know the word, either, because it had only been thirty seconds tops but Jinsoul was starting to freeze out here and she wasn’t sure if her mom would even let her come back empty handed. But how does one find a cat?  
Eureka! Jinsoul crouched, wildly scanning the sidewalk until she found what she was looking for. You’ve lost now, cat, she said, her brow furrowing in determination. Jinsoul spared half a second for a triumphant hop before she set off on another run, following the distinct line of paw prints leading down the road. The streets of Jinsoul’s childhood flashed by, reminding her of previous winters spent throwing snowballs and building ugly snowmen. Some of the houses were already decked out in Christmas lights, though she couldn’t stop to look at them much because her eyes were trained on the trail running next to her feet. Jinsoul reigned back her sprint into an unstable jog, wheezing a bit in the dry December air. She hadn’t run this hard since she joined the track team in Freshman year. Needless to say, that was not the wisest decision of her high school years.   
Pumping her arms, Jinsoul skidded around the corner when the paw prints abruptly turned onto Old Elm Circle. She was pretty far from home now, at least six streets over if the map in her head was correct. According to her watch, she had a minute and a half left before her mom’s five minutes would elapse. She wasn’t going to make the deadline, but if she could nab the animal in the next few minutes she might still be saved. Any longer outside and the cat would be fine—her mom let the animal wander around during the day, although it always came back for dinner—but Jinsoul might start to cry. Her thin NASA T-Shirt and white hoodie, ideal for lounging inside with a cup of hot chocolate, were failing miserably to protect against the biting wind, and her slippers (because of course she wasn’t wearing running shoes around the house) did nothing to protect her sock-clad toes from getting wet. She didn’t despair, though, because the paw prints had become less spaced out, like the cat had finally gotten tired and decided to stop rocketing across the neighborhood.   
Jinsoul had to give it credit, the monster was smart. Had to give her credit, Jinsoul reminded herself, because her mom always got annoyed when she didn’t act like the cat was a person. Nari had been enlisted as a Jinsoul replacement the previous year during her first semester of college. With the oldest daughter out of the house—Yerim was still there, but she was a reclusive teenager—her mom got lonely and took in what Jinsoul was pretty sure was a stray her dad found one day on the street. Now, Jinsoul cursed the unfairness, remembering how she couldn’t even have a pet fish when she was little. She wanted a pretty blue one. She was going to name it Steve. Alas, she miscalculated and made the request when her parents were freshly mad at her for pushing Yerim down the stairs in a cardboard box. She just wanted to know what would happen! For science! Nevertheless, she didn’t get the fish.  
As Jinsoul moved further from home, the houses began to look less and less familiar. The streets closest to her house she remembered frequenting daily, but she rarely ventured out to Old Elm Circle as a child, as it was in the opposite direction from school. She did vaguely remember some houses, like the residence of that punk whom she made cry in junior high when she beat him out for the position of math team captain. What a weakling. Oddly enough, a party there ended up being the place where she had her first kiss, an awkward affair with a straight girl who proceeded to avoid her for the rest of the year. Yes, this neighborhood had all sorts of memories. What she didn’t want was for her last experience in it to be her own murder at the hands of an aggravated pet owner.  
Excitement growing, Jinsoul almost squealed in relief when she spotted the tip of a grey tail flitting from behind a nearby tree in the yard of a yellow-painted house. I’ve got you now, she thought, cracking her knuckles and stealthily creeping closer. She was so close that she could practically taste victory as she reached her hands out… until her eyes made contact with an amber feline pair. Frozen in place, Jinsoul could only watch the cat tilt its head, poised to spring. It waited that extra second— just because it could, to let Jinsoul register the situation—before racing away from her in a couple of huge leaps. “No no no no!” Jinsoul cried, lunging after it. She stayed hot on the animal’s tail, following it a couple feet down the sidewalk before skidding left around the corner of a house onto the patch of snow-frosted grass there. “No please don’t go up that tree, please-” Jinsoul sighed in relief when the cat darted past, taking care not to trip as she adjusted to new terrain. She had Nari cornered now. The cat had run past the yellow house into the space between in and another backyard.   
Jinsoul didn’t mean to brag, but she had always been good at strategy games. She approached confidently from the front and side, the remaining two directions both blocked by a convenient white fence. Jinsoul closed in a few feet at a time, doing quite well until, in her haste, she moved just a bit too quickly, breaking a branch under her foot and lurching forward. The cat screeched in surprise and made a 180 degree turn, running straight up the nearest surface, which happened to be the fence of some unknown family’s backyard. Digging her claws in, Nari scrambled up the wooden slats and plummeted to the other side. Leaving herself no time to think, Jinsoul hurtled after, vaulting over the fence just like the cat just did; unlike the cat, she didn’t land on her feet. One frantic moment of dim realization later, she found herself lying on her back in the snow-coated grass after a terrific knock to the head. The last thing Jinsoul registered before blacking out was a surprised gasp and the sound of chair legs skittering, some stranger wondering what had just interrupted their peaceful Saturday morning.  
Head spinning, the first thing Jinsoul noticed after regaining consciousness was how cold her feet were. Like, seriously, her socks were still sopping wet and clinging to her toes, which she could barely feel inside her slippers. The second thing Jinsoul noticed was that she was still lying on the ground, a bed of snow against her back. Jinsoul yelped a bit from the cold, trying to sit up and falling back down once she noticed the third thing: a blonde girl, hovering awkwardly over her prone form, warm brown eyes widened and showing obvious embarrassment. Jinsoul managed to prop herself on her elbows and look the girl up and down, who still hadn't moved from her weird crouching position by Jinsoul’s side.  
“Care to explain why you just face planted into my yard?” the girl asked. Jinsoul was startled by the lilt of her voice, more melodic than she was expecting and distantly familiar. The sound was enough to stun her into silence. Jinxoul appreciatively scanned the stranger with greater attention, lingering on her full red lips and soft-looking hair, which upon closer inspection turned out to be a bit darker than it seemed at first glance—unlike Jinsoul’s, which was bleached within an inch of its life. Wow, score, Jinsoul involuntarily thought to herself. It wasn’t every day she opened her eyes to a sight this pretty. Iconic lesbian and stupid roommate Ha Sooyoung wasn’t even going to believe it.  
“Hi…” Jinsoul said dazedly, drawing the one syllable out for lack of anything better to say. The girl looked perplexed.  
“Umm…Hi.” They stared at each other for a moment. Jinsoul would be worried that she had a concussion or something, but this was pretty much her usual behavior. There was just something about this girl’s face that made Jinsoul feel like she had already known her for years.  
“Oh!” Jinsoul finally exclaimed. It dawned on her that the situation she had found herself in was slightly atypical. “I was looking for a cat!” That only seemed to make the girl more confused. Her calm stare was beginning to make Jinsoul profoundly uncomfortable, like she was trying—and succeeding—to dissect her from the inside out. Jinsoul couldn’t decide if she liked it or not.  
“This cat?” the girl said, picking up the content looking feline by her side and holding it up for inspection. Nari mewled a hello to Jinsoul, allowing herself to be handled by this random stranger when Jinsoul’s attempts to do the same had been consistently foiled for months. “Why were you looking for her at the bottom of my fence?” Jinsoul flushed from embarrassment, only growing redder when the girl nodded towards a gate in the fence a mere five feet from the site of Jinsoul’s undignified leap. “You could have just walked in, it wasn’t locked or anything.” Jinsoul mumbled a pathetic excuse about not having the time. Surprisingly, the girl smiled, and unsurprisingly, her eyes looked really pretty when she did so, the corners scrunching up adorably in contrast to her previously calm expression. “Well, are you alright?” she asked. Jinsoul nods dumbly. “Come on then.” She stood up and waited expectantly, extending a hand towards Jinsoul. When she didn’t take it, the girl rolled her eyes. “I’m not gonna murder you, you just look like you’rer about to die in that outfit. So come on.” Jinsoul allowed the girl to pull her up, clinging onto her hand longer than necessary for the minute source of warmth. They walked over to the sliding door of what must have been the girl’s house, but instead of going inside, the girl held up a hand and leaned in the opposite direction.   
“Huh?” Jinsoul asked, furrowing her brow and making her patented “befuddled face,” as Sooyoung liked to call it. The girl laughed pleasantly, her voice ringing in the crisp silence of a suburban winter.   
“Just wait a sec.” She let go of Jinsoul, unhooking the shivering girl from her grasp like one would a stubborn barnacle from the side of a ship. Jinsoul was very confused and remained so even after she realized the girl was just making a quick detour, grabbing her book from the table on the patio. She might still be kind of addled, but Jinsoul was pretty sure she wasn’t the only weird one to have been out and about on this freezing day. Reader Girl was mysterious, and Jinsoul found that she liked it.  
The girl moved to pick up Nari in her other hand, but Jinsoul had gotten a hold of her arm again, literally unable to let go—her fingers were half frozen in their position—so she just opened the door, letting the cat scamper through. The moment before walking in, some sort of delayed stranger-danger reaction, Jinsoul got cold feet—metaphorical, this time. She paused to weigh the risk of hypothermia against what promised to be a rather frightening social interaction. In the end, though, the girl made the choice for her; she turned to look right at Jinsoul, dragging her into the blessed warmth of the house with a mildly irritated smile, and Jinsoul didn’t think she had ever seen something so beautiful.  
“Oh,” Reader Girl added while tugging her inside, as if on an afterthought. “My name is Jungeun.”   
. . .  
Jungeun’s house was cozy, a thick maroon rug blanketing part of the living room floor and family photos smiling down from the mantle of the fireplace. Bookshelves covered the walls, titles on countless spines illuminated by the snow-light that streamed in through the windows.  
“Jinsoul,” Jinsoul blurted out. “Umm. That’s my name.” It had finally occurred to her that perhaps, as the intruder by means of fence-tumble, she was the one who really ought to introduce herself. Thankfully, Reader Girl—Jungeun—either didn’t notice her awkwardness or didn’t care.   
“Is this your cat, Jinsoul?” Jungeun asked, with a teasing lilt to her voice that could easily go unnoticed.  
“Umm…” all of a sudden Jinsoul was unprepared for the question. “Yes? I mean, no, well, yes, it’s my mom’s, but she’s gonna kill me if I don’t bring that satanic beast home.” Jinsoul punctuated the statement with a nervous smile, perhaps already anticipating the painful death that might await her. Jungeun frowned.   
“This satanic beast?” she said, lifting Nari with one hand. The cat purred easily, nudging Jungeun’s head with its own. “Aslan is a good cat, very agreeable.” Jinsoul looked confused at the name, making Jungeun roll her eyes. “From The Chronicles of Narnia. Do you even read?” Jinsoul pouted at that.   
“Aslan is a stupid name for Nari.” Jungeun, who had been leading her through the living room farther into the blessed warmth of the house, put down Aslan-Nari and scoffed.  
“Can you think of a better one?” she asked. Pretending to think, Jinsoul stopped walking and scratched dramatically at her head.  
“I don’t know, how about Goyangi?” Jungeun flicked her upper arm, pretty harshly for someone she had literally just met.  
“Really, Jinsoul, you want to name the cat ‘cat’ in Korean? No wonder she doesn’t like you.” Convinced she had won the argument, Jungeun started walking again, tugging Jinsoul by the hand into the kitchen. Jinsoul didn’t protest because she sensed that there might be cocoa in her near future if she shut up right about now. Jinsoul was of the opinion that in order to achieve happiness in life, it is of the utmost importance to know when to shut up.  
Jungeun bustled about a bit in her kitchen, Jinsoul hovering awkwardly a few feet away while the girl messed with the stove. She got the vague impression that her mom would approve of this space, with its neatly arranged supplies and tasteful cabinets and countertops that Jinsoul was ninety percent sure matched the rest of the room (she wasn’t really one for home design). In the silence, a wave of self-consciousness hit Jinsoul, leaving her staring down at the yellow tiled floor. Self-consciousness for a myriad of reasons, but namely, What The Heck Is She Doing Here? Once Jungeun was finished, though, and they were back in the living room, it took only a few seconds of formality until Jinsoul was sprawled out on her new friend’s couch, a cup of warm chocolatey milk within her grasp. Now that she was warm and free of cat-induced panic, Jinsoul finally realized how damn weird the situation is. For a girl who’d much rather stay inside and build gundam models than initiate conversations, she had certainly gotten herself into an interesting one.  
“Jungeun,” Jinsoul said hesitantly, her shivering finally subsiding, “why are you so alright with some random stranger tumbling into your backyard to interrupt your reading time? And then crash in your house?” She frowned. “Unless you aren’t. That’d be awkward.” Smiling mischievously, Jungeun said,  
“Well, I’m not certain I would be alright with that.” Jinsoul felt confusion start to set in again, something that seemed to be a common emotion around this unknowable girl. “Oh my God, don’t look so scared!” Jungeun said. “I was going to draw this out longer, but we actually do know each other. Well. Sorta.”   
Jungeun stopped talking, waiting for some sort of reaction or recognition. Jinsoul was thoroughly befuddled. According to basic social customs, she should probably have been stammering out an apology by now, but she couldn’t imagine a world in which she wouldn’t recognize the striking girl in front of her. Although, now that she thought about it, Jungeun did look awfully familiar. “BBC Uni?” Jungeun prompted. Jinsoul blinked in surprise, although that did make sense. They seemed to be roughly the same age.   
“Wait wait wait…” Jinsoul stalled, still unable to place her. “Give me a second.” Could she be from Stats? No, Jinsoul paid pretty close attention in that one. Fundamental Notation of Mathematical Symbols? Not to stereotype the other girl the exact same way everyone did to Jinsoul, but Jungeun didn’t really strike her as a math major. Which meant... oh dear lord Jinsoul was an idiot.  
It’s the girl, from that class. Ash brown hair, cute glasses, cute ass… Well. Yes. Anyways.   
“That’s not fair, your hair is lighter now,” Jinsoul whined. Jungeun was thrown off guard, blushing faintly at the recognition. “American Literature!” Jinsoul crowed. “You’re the smart girl who raises her hand a lot! I’m the girl who’s always dozing off in the back corner!”  
“Yes, obviously,” Jungeun deadpanned. Her eye twitched, the only crack in her sternly frowning facade.   
In Jinsoul’s defense, she was a math person and morning classes were stupid. Feeling a strong urge to defend herself, she voiced her indignance to her skeptical new friend.  
“I like books, really! But I can-not-will-not ever struggle through that monstrosity of a James Joyce novel the professor calls a ‘literary triumph!’” Jungeun giggled in spite of herself.   
“It’s a miracle you passed the course,” she mumbled. “Wait a sec, you did, right? Right?” Jinsoul raised an eyebrow artfully and gave the other girl a moment to squirm.  
“Well, yes…” Jinsoul said, drawing the word out for suspense. “Just barely. Thank god for sparknotes and a good memory.” Jungeun looked as if she was preparing herself for a full out tirade against the evils of sparknotes, but Jinsoul held up a finger, furrowing her brow as something tickled the back of her brain. There was something Jinsoul was forgetting. It wasn’t just leftover anxiety from that dreadful English class, although that was definitely still lingering. She cycled through her list of reminders, but it wasn’t school, not groceries, not her family… oh shit.   
Family... Mom...  
Cat.   
“Ahhhhhhh!” Jinsoul threw herself off the sofa, scooping Nari into her arms. “I’ve got to go!”  
“Give me your phone,” Jungeun said. Jinsoul was a bit perplexed, but she handed her phone over automatically before realizing what she was doing. Usually she didn’t allow her friends within ten feet of it when it was unlocked. Wait a sec, was Jungeun her friend? They had only known each other for twenty minutes, but Jinsoul already felt comfortable with her in a way she didn’t with many others.   
Jungeun handed the phone back with a pat to Jinsoul’s arm. “Text me when you get home. I’m not sure I trust you to get Aslan back unscathed.” Jinsoul was torn between blushing and being offended. It took her a second to realize in her confusion that she had just managed to score a hot girl’s number.   
“Uh, sweet!” Jinsoul said. She squeezed the cat to her chest in a vice grip like a football player receiving a handoff from the quarterback and stumbled out through the sliding door from which she came. Her skin tingled where Jungeun had touched her. Ah, well. It was probably just because of the cold.


End file.
